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HISTORY

Public Notices

kitchen and bunk cars to see how people traveling by train ate and slept, and more. And who wouldn’t love to have a birthday party in a caboose?

e railroad museum continues to get more interactive, Kramer said, with train rides, turntable demonstrations, art activities, a locomotive simulator and more — everything to please train lovers and train novices alike.

A farming life

Daily life on the plains in Colorado evolved between the 1860s and the 1890s, and the Littleton Museum has two working historical farms for visitors to learn about what life was like then. Historic interpreters in period clothing are happy to explain trades and skills of the time, plus they maintain the gardens, pumpkin elds and livestock.

According to the Littleton Museum, great care has been taken to ensure that plants and animals are historically accurate for the time period they represent.

e 1860s farm is a pioneer homestead during Littleton’s settlement period, a time before train travel, when oxen-drawn wagons were the main source of transportation. e schoolhouse at the farm, the rst in Littleton, showed how residents were moving forward to establish a formal township. e 1860s farm also has an ice house, sheep shed and barn.

e 1890s farm, which has a barn, tool shed, and privy, also has a working blacksmith shop, which was important to farm communities.

e shop depicts blacksmithing in 1903, when electricity reached Littleton.

The importance of history

“History is important,” Kramer said, explaining that people need to learn to appreciate how difcult it was to settle Colorado.

Rucker added that farmers in the early settlement days of Colorado worked from dawn to dusk just to survive. In addition to farming and raising animals, families tended gardens, and women taught school, did laundry, took in boarders, and sewed and mended clothes to make extra money to buy necessities. It was a di cult way of life, something people should understand and appreciate.

“It was just the reality of the time,” Rucker said.